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Geologic Heat Linked To East Coast Ocean Warming Trend

seafloor hydrothermal ventA well-defined ocean warming trend originating off the United States East Coast is likely from super-heated and methane-enriched fluids emitted from numerous seafloor hydrothermal vents/hot springs (see figure 1 after the jump).

Supporting evidence:

This trend has shown up on shallow Sea Surface (SST) maps since their advent in 1997 and has likely been present for thousands of years.

The SST mapping system continuously measures worldwide ocean temperatures by integrating satellite and ocean buoy data.

Every two or three days the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) posts this temperature data in map view.

A review of SST data indicates that the East Coast ocean warming trend is the only very strong warming feature ever recorded along the entire East Coast.

Figure 1. Shallow Sea Surface Temperature Map (SST Map) of oceans surrounding the United States of America (warmed ocean shaded red, map credit NOAA, labels J.Kamis).

The “ocean floor heat source point” has never moved (Figure 1). It has maintained the same temperature scale since 1997.

Integration then analysis of these characteristics and other information, primarily geological in nature, proves that the warm trend is the result of emissions from seafloor geological features such as a group of hydrothermal vents.

Conversely, these characteristics and other information prove that the forces and situations listed below are not the root cause of the East Coast ocean warming trend.

  • Uniform worldwide atmosphere warming as per the global warming theory. Uniform atmospheric warming would lead to the generation of other East Coast warming trends that have the same temperature magnitude. This is not the case.
  • Similar ocean water depth. Similar ocean depths are present all along the East Coast and none of these depths are home to another high-magnitude temperature ocean trend.
  • Gulf Stream ocean current. A review of all SST Maps indicates that the Gulf Stream ocean current, which circumvents the entire north and the central Atlantic Ocean, has never generated another warming trend with the temperature magnitude as per the East Coast trend.
  • Human-generated warm fluids flushed into the Atlantic Ocean. The East Coast warming floor heat source point encompasses an area off the coast of North Carolina and Virginia. This source point is not positioned near a major metropolitan area. Additionally, other large metropolitan areas such as Miami, Baltimore, and New York City do not have significant ocean floor heat source points and high magnitude temperature warm trends associated with them.

General evidence linking seafloor methane emissions to super-heated fluid emissions from hydrothermal vents is abundant and reliable per other information and the quote below.

“Since the discovery of the first hydrothermal vents along the Galápagos Rift (major seafloor fault system) in 1977, scientists have puzzled over the origin of methane rising from these deep-sea hot springs. Regardless of differences in location, geology, and chemistry, all hydrothermal vents worldwide release at least some methane in varying amounts. Whether the gas comes from water-rock reactions during fluid circulation or preexists as pockets of methane stored in the crust, remains a controversial question” (see here).

One of many specific examples that illustrate the connection between seafloor methane emissions and super-heated fluid emissions from seafloor hydrothermal vents is located northeast of Greenland, west of the Svalbard Islands in the Fram Strait (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Long, linear trends of seafloor methane seeps are located northeast of Greenland and just southwest of the Svalbard Islands.

Here methane seeps are aligned in a series of long linear trends that are parallel to well-documented faults associated with the northern extent of a 1,000-mile-long linear mountain chain of seafloor volcanoes, faults, and hydrothermal vents.

These geological features are proven to emit large amounts of super-heated, methane-rich fluid into the overlying ocean. The mountain chain is referred to by many names. Here we use the name Jan Mayen Volcanic Complex (see here and here).

Dag Rune Olsen of the University of Bergen led a research team that has investigated and mapped Jan Mayen for many years. He describes this volcanic complex as follows:

“We probably know even less about the very deep seas and oceans then we know about the moon,” he said. The range extends from Jan Mayen island in the Greenland Sea to the Fram Strait between Svalbard and Greenland. It comprises hundreds of volcanos, some just 20m below the surface.

The new discovery comprises hundreds of more volcanoes, some just 20m below the surface. …

“We have found volcanoes at such a shallow level and they could break the surface at any time and form a new island. … We have long known that Iceland has both volcanic activity and hot springs, but we thought that we did not have anything like that in Norway. But we do, it was only underwater.” here).

The above-information concerning the Fram Strait’s methane seeps is thought to be proof positive that they were generated and maintained by multiple strings of heat-emitting, methane-rich hydrothermal vents.

Next, we discuss the implications of methane seeps whose seafloor geographic position perfectly matches the East Coast warming trend’s shallow sea surface origin point (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Map of seafloor methane seeps that are positioned along two linear-intersecting straight lines. (map and labeling credit Mississippi State University and USGS, red lines by J. Kamis).

Research by Mississippi State and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) discovered and mapped 570 seafloor methane seeps off the shores of North Carolina and Virginia (see here). They concluded that the methane was being emitted from geological features termed “cold seeps“.

Cold Seeps emit much cooler seawater (140°F) than hydrothermal vents (867°F) and therefore in the author’s opinion do not have the capacity to generate the overlying East Coast ocean warming trend.

The author believes that the two long, linear methane trends shown in Figure 3 are the result of long, linear seafloor faults (Figure 3).

Faults that are home to a string of hydrothermal vents which emit huge amounts of methane-rich, super-heated fluids from a string of hydrothermal vents. Vents that are the root cause of the East Coast ocean warming trend.

In summary, evidence substantiates that a well-defined, persistent and non-moving ocean warm trend originating off the East Coast of the United States is the result of super-heated and methane enriched fluids emitted from numerous seafloor hydrothermal vents/hot springs.

This has far-reaching implications concerning the root cause of current worldwide ocean warming.

Those advocating the global warming theory state that warming of Earth’s oceans is exclusively the result of atmospheric warming, which is induced by the Sun or human-induced emissions of CO2 emissions.

They do not state that one other significant force that effects the warming of Earth’s oceans is heat flow from seafloor geological features. This is clearly an atmospheric bias.

Many previous Climate Change Dispatch articles have shown that geologically heating of Earth’s oceans is the root cause of El Ninos, West Antarctic ocean warming, Arctic Sea Ice melting, end of Ice Ages, and so-called coral bleaching.

Clearly it is time to allow funding, research and the freedom to discuss the effect seafloor geological features.


James Edward Kamis is a retired professional Geologist with 42 years of experience, a B.S. in Geology from Northern Illinois University (1973), an M.S. in geology from Idaho State University (1977), and a longtime member of AAPG who has always been fascinated by the connection between Geology and Climate. More than 42 years of research/observation have convinced him that Geological forces, especially Earth’s Upper Mantle Convection Systems which drive the dynamics of outer crustal plates, are an important driver of the Earth’s climate as per his Plate Climatology Theory.

Comments (8)

  • Avatar

    Spurwing Plover

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    Look how mach Nature contributes all this CO2 far more them humans do something for the Nature profectionists to learn

  • Avatar

    Boxorox

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    GEOLOGY to the rescue!! – again
    As nearly always is the case, Earth’s natural processes explains just about everything we need to know about how the world works. Humans should stick to their shopping, sports teams, and Instagram moments.

  • Avatar

    David Lewis

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    I remember watching a National Geographic documentary about the sea off of Greenland. Throughout the show they were continuing mentioning the warmer water and blaming it on global warming. This is just another example of how global warming/climate change is blamed for everything.

  • Avatar

    Spurwing Plover

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    Some of the biggist scams in history just remember about the Trojan Horse this Global warming/Climate Change as well as Green New Deal is the Trojan Donkey of the Democrats and Globalists BEWARE OF GREEKS BEARING GIFTS was the warning they ignored and we know the results

  • Avatar

    Roger Payne

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    Another example of how in fact we know so very little about Earth processes, he relation to the sun, moon, and solar system, a huge problem “solved” by the hubris of saying was are changing it all with AGW. After all, we must remember that Greta says she can see CO2.

  • Avatar

    Denis Ables

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    All this nonsense about climate change has finally been put to bed. While CO2 is increasing due to human activity so we can’t keep doing that indefinitely, our climate has, at worst, little to do with CO2 increase.

    More than two decades ago Henrik Svensmark, a Danish physicist, and his associates proposed a new theory which did not involve CO2. Svensmark claimed that warmings and coolings were brought on by variation in sun activity. The sun activity impacts a relatively stable level of cosmic rays, some of which otherwise would penetrate the lower atmosphere. More cosmic ray entry leads to more cloud coverage. The level of cloud coverage dictates the amount of sun radiation which reaches the earth’ surface, and that dictates higher or lower average earth temperatures. Until very recently the sun activity has been high, and that led to our current warming. Sun activity has very recently dropped significantly. If this inactive sun cycle persists, we should, according to Svensmark, begin experiencing a cooling. CERN has confirmed that cosmic rays can influence cloud coverage.

    Recently Easterbrook, a geologist, came out with a comprehensive supporting study which makes use of available data over the past 800,000 years. (That includes a few ice ages, now referred to as “glaciations”.) Easterbrooks’s book title says it all: “The Solar Magnetic Cause of Climate Changes and Origin of the Ice Ages”.

    The summary on page 176 of Easterbrook’s book is clear. ” EVERY cool period was characterized by low sunspot numbers, indicating low strength of the sun’s magnetic field, and high production rates of beryllium-10 and radiocarbon, indicating a high intensity of cosmic rays.”

    “EVERY warm period was coincident with high sunspot numbers and low production rates of beryllium-10 and radiocarbon. Thus, it is unequivocally clear that climate changes, large and small, are driven by fluctuations of the sun’s magnetic field.”

    It is also clear that at least some of the earlier warmings during this interglacial were global and at least as warm as it is now. Alarmists, instead of taking advantage of this historical data, deny it and speculate about CO2 impact on global temperature. There is no evidence supporting their dubious hypothesis.

    At one point M. Mann was publicly quoted, supposedly rebutting skeptics by claiming something like – you don’t go to a dentist to have your gall bladder removed. It turns out that Mann’s posture on CO2 causing warming has put him in the dentist’s position. CO2 has little or nothing to do with our warmings and probably should be left to health authorities and botanists rather than climatologists.

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    Rob de Vos

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    I could follow the heating of the SST right above the Fram Strait hydrothermal spot from 2014 up to now at https://earth.nullschool.net/ . At 15 december 2019 it was still full working, heating up the SST to 12.4 C. The next day, 16 December 2019, it stopped and the SST dropped to 2.8 C. Up to now there’s no activity, resulting in the forming of more sea ice in the western fjords of Svalbard. See the SST pictures at https://klimaatgek.nl/wordpress/2020/01/28/de-opwarming-van-westelijk-spitsbergen/

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    Zoe Phin

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    Cool. I got the same result:

    phzoe.com(slash)2020/03/13/geothermal-animated/

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